Your Right to Know

Columbus will install security cameras in parks and other high-traffic areas Downtown, in hopes of minimizing the risks of a terrorist attack in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing.

Columbus City Council approved spending $500,000 at its meeting last night to install at least nine cameras Downtown. They will be placed in Genoa Park, North Bank Park and at Broad and Front streets and be operational by the time hundreds of thousands of people come Downtown for the Red, White & Boom celebration on July 3.

“This is all about protecting the public,” said Dan Giangardella, a deputy director for the city’s Department of Public Safety. “Mayor (Michael B.) Coleman asked us three weeks ago what improvements we need to make, and this is one of the things we talked about.”

The city did not plan to install the cameras Downtown before the April 15 tragedy in Boston, where three people were killed and more than 260 injured. Exterior cameras, most belonging to retail stores in Boston, were instrumental in helping authorities identify brothers Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev as the main suspects.

The Columbus security cameras, just like the roughly 160 already installed in city neighborhoods, will be equipped with zoom and tilt features, along with facial recognition to help identify suspects or victims.

“I just want to reiterate there is no impending threat to Columbus, but we feel these cameras are needed to protect the public and help us monitor areas where large crowds gather throughout the year,” Giangardella said.

The cameras will blend in with their environment and will allow police to better scan for disturbances 24 hours a day, Councilwoman Michelle Mills said.

It’s likely that more cameras will be added in other areas Downtown, she said.

The city is using money from its public-safety capital budget, which consists of bond revenue, to pay SimplexGrinnell to install the cameras.

SimplexGrinnell, based in Westminster, Mass., is the same company that has installed cameras in the Hilltop, South Linden, Weinland Park and Mount Vernon neighborhoods, as well as along E. Livingston Avenue.

Those cameras have had mixed results on crime since being installed in 2011. Weinland Park and the Hilltop areas have had a nearly 50 percent reduction in crime from 2011 to 2012, according to Division of Police crime statistics.

Mount Vernon and South Linden have seen slight decreases during that same period, but crime is up nearly 20 percent in the E. Livingston Avenue area because of a significant increase of burglaries and robberies.

Also at last night’s meeting, City Council approved four job-incentive agreements with area companies that have promised to bring a total of 442 jobs to Columbus for about $3 million in tax breaks.

The incentives packages include:

• The Safelite Group, an auto-glass supplier, has promised to bring 350 new jobs along with the 1,079 existing positions. Those new jobs will carry an annual payroll of $14.2 million.

The city agrees to give back about 90 percent of the income tax from those new jobs for the first five years. A second agreement allows Safelite to keep 65 percent of the income tax for three years beyond that.

The state also agreed to give Safelite about $1.7 million in tax incentives.

• Orange Barrel Media LLC plans to move out of its Grove City headquarters and into the Franklinton neighborhood by next year.

The city is allowing the outdoor advertising company to keep 75 percent of its property taxes for 10 years, a value of about $418,500.

Orange Barrel plans to construct a large office in Franklinton and rehab an existing 10,000-square-foot facility at 251 N. Hartford Ave. The company also will create 12 full-time positions and spend about $5 million to build its headquarters in Franklinton.

• Print Syndicate, an apparel designer, gets to keep 50 percent of income-tax revenue for two years generated by 80 employees that it plans to hire. The company formed in November and is a spinoff from the Columbus custom-apparel company Skreened.

The company will keep $75,000 in income-tax revenue during the agreement.